Progress

 

Before Judy can get any work done on her knee, we need an MRI on it so the doctors know what they’re getting into.  We made arrangements for an “Open” MRI; “Open” being a relative term.  It’s still a tube, but it’s a shorter tube and it’s open at both ends.  Judy could be described as CLAUSTROPHOBIC!, and she’s not all that tall, so going into a tube of *any* length is a big deal.

 

That was Monday’s project.  With the help of a couple valium, an eye mask, some soft music and a 20 minute head-rub, we got my claustrophobe wife though the MRI without her destroying the machine.

 

Progress.

 

 

Dear Mom and Dad,

I am having lots of fun at Camp Taylor. Annie is my roommate. She has been very nice to me. When other people try to pet me, especially her Mom and Dad, she gets right between me and them and makes sure they don’t hurt me.

I get to sleep on the couch every night. Judy even made sure my blankie is there waiting for me. By the way, I always start out in my bed, and only get on the couch after the lights are turned off.

Every morning Annie and I take a walk around the park. When we get home Uncle Steve gives us treats, and after that we get breakfast. I am beginning to like it here. This morning I even went up to them and wagged my tail a lot. They seemed to like that.

Today, Annie and I went for a balloon ride. Boy that was fun!

Uncle Steve wants to know if Dad has seen any Motmots in Costa Rica yet.

I miss you.

Love,

Eddie

Louisville house update

We sold the house a year and a half ago. I hear it has been a work-in-progress ever since. The new owner must have gutted the inside, as we hear, because it looks like the entire inside is now on the outside.

Migration

Migration
Got our first migration birds Saturday. American Golden Plovers. A flock of thirty of them on the mudflats at Charlie’s Pasture. Let the migration begin!
Here is a winter resident; the Whooping Crane. Four of the maybe 250 of them left on the planet.






It's big for a bird; about the same height as Judy.

Parts

 

Judy has a bad knee.  Her left one.  We’re going to get an MRI on it next week, and probably surgery after that.  She’s getting her right shoulder looked at as well.  She had surgery on that shoulder ten years ago to repair a torn rotator cuff.  It may need more attention.

 

Yesterday we were walking along and Judy suddenly just fell.  Her right foot stayed where it was and everything else went to the ground.  She fell off her ankle.  At the time, I thought she had blown out her left knee all the way, but she blew the ankle instead.

 

Today, the ankle is sore and swollen.  We went to the Island Clinic to get it X-rayed and diagnosed.  Nothing broken.  Second degree sprain.  We got a double-wrap foot bandage and Advil for it.

 

Our charming son-in-law wants to know when a person just gets declared “Totaled”.  I told him not to worry, I kept the receipt.  Now he wants to know if I got the extended warranty.

 

Parts are falling off faster than we can glue them back on.  We need some of those Mister Potatohead parts.  When they fall off, you can just pick them up and stick them back on about where they’re supposed to go.

 

 

Energy Crisis

 

The next phase of the adventure will begin when we try to settle our bill with the Electric Company.  The guy that measured the accuracy of our meter is not affiliated with the Electric Company; he is independent of them.  He writes up his report and sends it on to them.  They should have it by now.  The meter checker concluded that our meter was running at 158% of normal.  It’s good to have agreement that our electric meter was crazy, but we may not agree on the quantity of error.  That 158% does not even begin to explain the 4,500 kilowatt hours of electricity per month we’ve been charged for.  We had to be off by a factor of 5 or 10.  Even if we agreed on the amount of error, how far back do you go to adjust the billing?  We don’t have anything that tells us when the meter went bad, or how bad it was when.

 

Two years ago, Judy was telling me we should change electric companies because our bill was higher than everyone else’s.  My response was that there are multiple electric companies in competition here.  Is it likely that one company’s charge per kilowatt hour is going to me materially different from another company’s charge?  Electricity is a commodity.  One company couldn’t afford to charge a higher rate than the other companies or everyone would just switch to the other companies.  It never occurred to me that we might have a mismeasurement of our usage.  We’ve probably had a bad meter, getting progressively worse, for at least the last two years; maybe even since they installed it five years ago!

 

We suppose the Electric Company has a lot more experience figuring out this sort of thing than we do.  Since we now know that electric meters *can* go bad, surely we’re not the only people who have had that happen.  The Electric Company will have experience sorting it out.  We’ll see what they come up with before we protest too much.  Maybe they know how to settle this fairly.

 

 

Fountain Rock

We brought back a rock from the Valley. It’s a really cool rock. So cool, in fact, we paid for it.
It fits right in front of the spilling pot fountain.

Looks like it’s always been there.